“We see death coming into our midst like black smoke, a plague which cuts off the young, and a rootless phantom which has no mercy for fair countenance. Woe is me of the shilling in the armpit; it is seething, terrible, wherever it may come, and a head that gives pain and causes a loud cry, a burden carried under the arms, a painful angry knob, and a white lump. It is of the form of an apple, like the head of an onion, a small boil that spares no one. Great is its seething, like a burning cinder, a grievous thing of an ashy colour. It is an ugly eruption that comes with unseemly haste. They are similar to the seeds of the black peas, broke in fragments of brittle sea-coal and crowds precede the end. It is a grievous ornament that breaks out in a rash. They are like a shower of peas, the early ornaments of Black Death, cinders of the peelings of the cockle weed, a mixed multitude, a black plague like halfpence, like berries. It is a grievous thing that they should be on a fair skin”.[Jeuan Gethin, 1349]